"The best guide for Home Care Services - Hands down!"

"An essential resource to be carried with you at all times."

Feature Article

The One Thing Your Reps Can Do - Right Now - That Will Grow Referrals Part 1

by

While we always try to fill the newsletter with value and actionable tips for our readers, this will be the one thing you can take from this edition of the newsletter, and if you put it into play today - you will see tremendous results. What is this magic bullet? Simply put, closing - or asking for the referral.

One of the areas that we constantly see home care and hospice sales people struggling with is closing the sale. Whenever we speak to a state or national association type crowd and closing comes up, we are likely to get some discomfort in the audience. If your sales people cannot ask for the order or the referral, they will not be as effective as they would be if they could. This is one area that you will want to use in your diagnostic tools if you have salespeople that are just not delivering results. If they are not closing, you should immediately train them to do so or move them to a position for which they are suited. A salesperson that cannot close is not a salesperson!

Training for sales is widely available, both from our company and others. We have home care and hospice specific training, books, CDs and DVDs that will help your sales force learn to close better. Our CD set, for instance, turns your Reps cars into learning libraries, and they can learn, re-learn, and refine their skills while driving between sales calls. The top sales people in all industries do exactly this - but for right now, in this article, I’m going to teach you one of the lessons that will drive your referral numbers up. Ready? Here we go:

First of all, the philosophy behind asking for the referral is two fold - one, if your sales people aren’t asking for the referral, that patient who needs home care or hospice either goes to a competitor, or even worse - goes without the much needed services and support they could have used. So asking for the referral is not about “sales”, so much as helping identify and help the members in our community who need our help. Second, asking for the referral is not about US (in other words, driving business for our company - that’s just a bonus), it’s about THEM (the referral sources and patients). If we can help a discharge planner or a physician at a hospital discharge a patient home earlier than if we hadn’t taken the referral, we are helping THEM. As we all know, they are trying to decrease their LOS. If a physician has a patient who calls all the time, at all hours of the night, and we can take that off his plate - how big of heroes do you think your agency would look like? How much brand loyalty would you begin to have if you took those problem patients off that physician’s hands? So it’s about THEM, not about US. Again, we are helping our referral sources and patients, not “selling”.

Make sure that each of your sales people have the ability to ask for the referral and do so in language that they are comfortable with and is effective. We have discovered from our acclaimed Square One Boot Camp that roleplaying practice increases retention and effectiveness by over 60%. As such, even if you dont send your Reps to our Boot Camp, you need to find the time to set aside and employ roleplaying as part of your training and continual support of the sales people. Have them make sales presentations to various people in your organization and provide good critiques. Practice makes perfect. If you have a ”reluctant” closer, help them to get comfortable and with practice they will zoom ahead with results. Once they are used to asking for the order, they will become comfortable and will thank you for the support.

In sales there is an old axiom; ABC – Always Be Closing. This applies in home care and hospice sales at all levels. Know when to ask for the order and then do so at every appropriate opportunity until you get the referrals. Your outside sales people should be asking something like “Is there anyone else I can help you with today?” when they get a referral, or “Thank you for referring Mrs. Brown to us last week. Is there anyone else that can benefit from the same high level of care?” if you received a referral previously, or “Which CHF patients are giving you and your staff the most challenges? I would be happy to take those off your plate and free up some of your time” when asking for a referral in generel (obviously insert whatever diagnosis is pertinent to the conversation).

It is vital that your Reps ask for the referral every time they call on a referral source. If they get into this habit, the referral source will expect it and have the referrals ready for them. After all, the sales person is there to help them with their home care and hospice referrals. Asking for the referral on every single call is a skill we teach in our training, as it involves finding out the best way to ask it in every situation, and how to present benefits to the person you are talking to in the process - but for now this article should be a great starter for you and your team.

Too many home care and hospice sales people are afraid to ask for the order or are “above” direct closing techniques. If they cannot overcome these roadblocks, then you should suggest that they do something else for the agency as they will never be really effective as a sales person.

Next week we will get even more in depth with example questions and strategies.

If you have any questions about closing or any of our programs, please email

Potpourri For a New Year

by

Our industry and its member agencies are like potpourri, the sum of the ingredients delivers the result. Still, you may be wondering, “why the title?”. Well, this issue I am touching on a number of topics in one column. Most are the result of questions posed to me over the last year or two or ideas that I had in my notebook for future columns.

Not-for-Profit Agencies

Does the profit status of our agency make a difference in our marketing efforts? This is an excellent question. I would contend that everything about your agency makes a difference - especially if it is a differentiating factor. Not-for-profit agencies will want to stress that they are investing back into their communities. Most of the time these agencies have a long history of serving their communities and this should be underscored in the sales and marketing messaging. That being said, this is a point that will support your overall assertions about quality and service - but keep in mind that alone, the statement does not carry a lot of weight. When surveyed, referral sources say that all things being equal they like dealing with a not-for-profit agency. The same referral sources though, when asked, said that they would not base a referral decision based on the agency’s profit status, and would much more likely base it on “ease of referral” and “quickness to respond”.

Hospital Based Agencies

The question I get from hospital based agencies is “why don’t our own discharge planners, doctors, etc. use us as much as they should?” The freestanding agencies are looking at the hospital based ones and thinking that they are getting all of the referrals coming out of that hospital. The truth is that the hospital based agencies that stop worrying about forcing the use of their agency and start treating the internal referral sources as a customer that needs selling will come out way ahead. It is always better to earn the business in the long run, and address and solve needs, as those are deeper and stronger relationships.

Pick the High Hanging Fruit

Don’t forget to come back to get the “high hanging fruit” after you have gone after all of the “low hanging fruit.” Every referral source has some additional referrals hidden by details. Look for the opportunity to educate your referral sources about all of the uses for home health and hospice and you will get more of these referrals. Work with your referral sources to make sure that you are getting them to make best use of your services. Additionally there are many referral sources in your market that are either non-traditional or are not high referrers. Look for ways to captivate that part of the market as well. Don’t assume that you got all of the fruit on the first pass!

Easy is the Answer

If you can make the referral sources lives easier, you will earn their business. Look for how you can make it easy to work with your agency. Also look for ways that the referral source will perceive as making it easier. Customize your service protocols to fit their needs. Ask your referral sources how you can make things easier on a regular basis. Find out how to handle the orders and paperwork for them and you will earn business. (Paperwork is the number one complaint about dealing with home health and hospice) If you would expect a pizza delivery company to provide top notch service to earn your business, why shouldn’t your referral sources and patients demand the same?

These are just a few of the items on my list, so watch for others in future columns. I hope they are helpful. If you have any questions you want answered, don’t hesitate to ask. Happy Selling and Marketing!

Celebrating Milestones

by

With 2011 coming to a close, it’s important to stop and remember where you’ve come from, and where you are now. With each passing year comes a new mile stone. Organizations can use important milestones to anchor marketing messages in their communities. The fact that the agency has served the community for ten, twenty, or twenty-five years, adds credibility and provides a point of differentiation. You should also have a base of testimonials to choose from patients by now - and if you don’t - you need to start collecting them asap. When a family member calls in, or a letter comes in, ask for permission to use it. There’s no greater time to ask then when they are thanking you and are happy for your help.

Celebrating a milestone is important for marketing to the community, to the internal customers, and to your employees. The agency staff will be proud to be part of this celebration, and even if they’ve only been on board for two years, they will be more likely to stay with the agency. So two important benefits of celebrating milestones are greater retention of marketing messages, and increased staff retention.

Paint the picture of world class excellence. Anytime you can add tangible proof to a message that reinforces stability and service to community, you should do so. Pride will exude from your staff and referral sources. Everyone wants to be associated with a winner. Use these same tactics to celebrate awards and other achievements.

How to Promote Milestones

Have anniversary apparel and pins made for your staff to wear proudly. Buttons, plaques, trophies, and other commemorative items are very effective to thank staff and referral sources.

Look at everything you plan through public relations lenses. Be proactively seeking ways to turn business events into publicity. As an example, a few years ago, Great Lakes Home Health and Hospice decided to purchase a fleet of company cars in response to the rising cost of mileage and hardship on the field staff. From a business perspective it makes perfect sense, and is not necessarily a newsworthy event. They selected the top mileage employees to qualify for a car.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The cars were painted red with a white number 1 and “Nurse Car” on the sides and top. The cars were painted much like NASCAR cars and act as rolling billboards. Because they are so unique, Ford Motor Company had their PR department get involved, and national and local media are covering the event. The cars were delivered to the staff members at a special ceremony at the Michigan International Speedway.

Public relations, particularly press releases, should be utilized to get the word out to the community about the milestone, as well as those activities that are created to celebrate it. Send press releases to local media, industry media, and online. The reason to release online is to get the search engines to find your agency more frequently when someone ‘Googles’ home care or hospice in your community. There are services that will do this for you, some are even free. Check out http://www.prweb.com to see how it works.

An agency in Goldsboro, North Carolina is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. They have included this information in all of their advertising throughout the year, and have special billboards to celebrate. They are using the opportunity to thank their referral sources and the communities they serve. This has been very successful for both bringing in additional business, and recruiting.

Be proud of our industry and all it has accomplished. Celebrate your milestones, and use them in your marketing, news releases, and stories. Good Luck and Happy Selling!

Quality: It Applies to Sales As Well (part 2)

by

Cultural transformation is the necessary plan for most home care and hospice organizations; a transformation to a customer centric, sales focused one. This starts with strong leadership, inclusiveness, management buy in, strong sales management and a company wide focus on doing what it takes to protect the agency’s market share and promote home care and hospice services. Always keep in mind that one of the most important areas for admission growth is garnering the referrals that come from getting the community to expand its use of home care and hospice. These are patients that otherwise would not receive services and this is an initiative that has universal acceptance and is mission driven.

Use Home Care Compare results and other benchmarked quality measurements to tell the story to the referral partners. The real key to using data to support your sales initiatives is to make sure it is meaningful to the target market. If you are targeting cardiologists, make sure your data are related to what is important to that market. Use graphical representation, where possible, to communicate your outcomes.

One of the most important initiatives is to make sure that the entire organization knows and can communicate what makes your program special. Points of differentiation should be developed and understood by the entire organization. When I am working at a client site, frequently there is poor to no ability of the senior management, sales and referral center teams to enumerate them. If these key customer contact people cannot do so, how can we expect the rest of the organization to do so?

The sales team must work in concert with admissions department (referral center) to manage the relationships with the referral partners.

Just as with any portion of your organization, evaluation and assessment of the current sales and referral management programs is the starting point.

Training is the number one contributing factor to a sales team that is able to continually increase the flow of admissions. Professionalism comes from knowing what to do and how to do it. Again, as with other programs, training breeds quality outcomes.

Finally, the similarities finish with ethical behavior as they do in all aspects of our business. The sales and marketing must always act ethically and take the moral high road. A keen focus on quality in the sales and marketing area will build strong, deep relationships based on trust and value add, not superficial relationships based on donuts.

Good Luck and Happy Selling!

Quality: It Applies to Sales As Well (part 1)

by

As an industry, home care and hospices are focused on improving quality as a continuous process to deliver the best care while being good stewards of the Medicare program. The same processes can apply to sales. The answer to the question, “How do I increase my referrals?” lies, most of the time, in continual improvements in the quality of the sales program. How well your sales people perform and their ability to continually generate more referrals, decreases the cost of acquisition for each case.

The QIOs mission and mandate from CMS is to: measure and report performance, adopt healthcare technology and use it effectively, redesign process and transform organizational culture. Further, for home health, the QIOs have been tasked with promote awareness and use of publicly reported home health quality measures, convey the message that some home health agencies do better than others in regards to quality measures that are important to beneficiaries and their caregivers and promote excellence and improvement in care.

Our quality mission for the sales and marketing of home health and hospice should be based in the same essential components:
- Measurement
- Reporting
- Use of technology
- Transformation of organizational culture
- Promote awareness of quality scores and measures in home health and hospice
- Convey how our organization does a better job
- Promote excellence of care for the patients and their families

Historically, there has been limited data available to benchmark sales and marketing for home care and hospice. Thankfully, that is changing rapidly and better data continues to be available. That being said, you should be measuring internally your flow of referrals, costs and results. You should know where your business is coming from and why. Have trended data showing account productivity historically. Management of the budget starts with the largest expense item, your sales people and their management. The key to success here is to measure the productivity of each sales person in terms of cost per admission.

Reporting should be empowering! The sales team should be reporting their activities and strive for continual improvement. What is measured, is achieved. The agency must also provide the sales people with reports that tell them where their admissions are coming from and where to focus their efforts.

Next time we’re going to talk about major trends and give you many more tips on how to improve quality, and increase referrals.

The Greatest Opportunity: Best Way To Grow Referrals in Home Care and Hospice (part 2)

by

One of the things we know is that it takes really well honed sales skills to convert a potential referral partner only using a fraction of what we have to offer, to one making broad use of our services. The sales people must be very adept at asking good probing questions that get the referral partner to talk about the problems created by their patients not receiving home care or hospice services. The other thing required is the ability to focus on these strategies over an extended period of time with each account. This is where good account information, strategically planned sales calls, and well designed follow up will pay huge dividends.

Another area of focus that will enable the community to expand their use of our services is to train the staff in the referral center (aka intake, admissions, etc.). They must be well trained to ask questions that discover needs, be empowered to discuss other uses of services, and have value added conversations with referral partners. The referral center professionals must transcend their role as order takers and become a trusted resource. Not only will you see an increase in total admissions, you will also see stronger, deeper referral partner relationships.

A word of caution: Too much detailed information can be counterproductive. As an example, if you are selling hospice services and want to distribute detailed criteria booklets, you are probably limiting the number of calls you will receive rather than expanding it. This is because most of your referral sources do not want to be hospice experts, and if it is not easy they will not make the referral. (Note: and for those doctors who really do want to be experts, these sales tools can be very effective.)

In home health, you don’t want the referral partner to try and figure out homebound status before calling, you just want them to call period. Think of your processes as making it easy to call, not about screening out those calls.

As I have discussed in multiple prior columns, you should focus on selling what you do best. Taking that to the next level requires looking at the benefits of these services and how they can best help the local community expand the way they think of home care and hospice services. Never lose sight of this key element when designing sales or marketing campaigns to both internal and external customers. So focus your efforts on your good accounts, and get them to expand their use of your services. Then work on getting other potential referral partners to expand their use of your agency to include what you do especially well.

Good luck and happy selling!

The Greatest Opportunity: Best Way To Grow Referrals in Home Care and Hospice (part 1)

by

The absolute greatest opportunity to grow referrals for home care or hospice lies in the ability to expand the community’s use of the agency’s services. In our industry there are two basic ways to grow your referrals:

-To compete for patient referrals already identified as needing home care or hospice
-By expanding the community’s use of those services.

In almost all markets, the latter represents the greatest opportunity. Yet in most organizations, the focus is almost entirely on competing for the patients that the decision to refer to home care or hospice has already been made.

Speaking of competition, if you are helping a referral partner see new ways to use your services, at that moment, you have no competition for those referrals! A great example is the physician practice (Internal Medicine or Family Practice) that tells you “we don’t make referrals to home care (or hospice), we let the hospital discharge planners handle those referrals.” What a gold mine! Assuming this is the case, think of how many patients not receiving services that would keep them from being admitted to the hospital in the first place. If this practice waits until a CHF patient requires hospitalization to receive home care or hospice, they are not be enjoying all of the benefits you can bring to them. So for the least amount of competition and the greatest opportunity to impact the lives of everyone involved, take advantage of those kinds of objections, and turn that practice into a high volume referral partner.

As an industry, we are always looking for ways to engage our organization in the quest to get more referrals. Since the expansion of the use of services speaks right to the heart of our mission, it is absolutely the best way to enlist the entire organization in selling your agency to the community. In hospice these approaches will both increase the percentage of patients who have the gift of hospice, and will have them referred earlier in the process.

Next time we will get further into depth about how to expand your best referring partner’s use of your services.

Practice Makes Perfect: The Essentials Of Training Your Sales Team (Part 1 of 3)

Sales training is important, but refreshing that knowledge is even more important. Large corporations require regular sales training. Even their top sales people are sent to training to refine their skills on a regular basis. The very best sales people in all industries are constantly working to improve their productivity. Since most work on a commission basis this is the only way that they can constantly raise their income. As with most professions, smart companies observe what the top performers do and then try to emulate them.

After a home care agency or hospice takes the first step of training their sales team, they must then embark on a program of continual coaching and training. The most successful sales people are constantly improving their approach and technique and having their knowledge refreshed. Ongoing learning is part of being a professional sales person. Sales is an art form and it requires practice to achieve excellence.

Hiring sales people for home care and hospice requires a focus on finding those applicants that possess the personality and character necessary to deliver the results. It is better to hire someone with good sales skills and experience selling a service, selling an intangible. They should have the core competencies to be able to effectively sell the agency’s services. Careful hiring practices are essential to assembling a highly effective sales team. Do not hire anyone that is not cut out to be a sales person. The craft is one that requires practitioners that have the innate skills to be good sales people. They must be self starters and should be motivated by the desire to compete and win. They should be focused on consistently beating their goals and set new sales records.

The sales person should earn their way through their sales productivity. Just as a field nurse has certain productivity standards, so too should the sales team. Set goals based on beating the referral patterns observed in the same month in prior years. Every market is different, but once you have several years of data under your belt you should be able to predict which months are the strongest and the weakest for referrals.

Another way for the sales team to “sharpen their saw” is to maintain a sales learning library. There are many great sales books and most are available on tape. Just visit your favorite local or online bookseller and you will find more than enough to choose from. Make them available to the members of the sales team. Some agencies will require certain reading - if you do, make sure that the sales people submit book reports to the group. Each will find different important parts to the same sales book and by having them all report back to you and the team; everyone will get more out of the assignment. If you send a member of the sales team to a conference (such as the NAHC Annual Meeting which has many sessions on home care and hospice sales and marketing), make sure that they know that on their return they will have to give report and share their knowledge with the entire team. Make attendance a reward for exceptional sales performance.

If you would like more information about the acclaimed industry specific sales training Simione Square One Boot Camp, click here.

Next time we will explore this further, and really get into the nitty gritty of the what, when, how, and why.

The Greatest Opportunity: Best Way To Grow Referrals in Home Care and Hospice (part 2)

by

Good luck and happy selling!

The Greatest Opportunity: Best Way To For Sales Reps to Grow Referrals in Home Care and Hospice (part 1)

by

-To compete for patient referrals already identified as needing home care or hospice
-By expanding the community’s use of those services.

If you would like more information about the acclaimed industry specific training that focuses on exactly how to expand your referral partner’s use of your services, Simione Square One Boot Camp

Next time we will get further into depth about how to expand your best referring partner’s use of your services.

Hospital Liaisons Your Biggest Source For Referrals?!

by

If your agency has the ability to put nurse liaisons inside hospital(s) in your territory, do it. When properly trained, these hospital liaisons can be, by far, one of the biggest sources of referrals for your agency. In fact, if you currently have liaisons in hospitals right now and they AREN’T some of your top referrers, you have a problem. Either you need to get them trained properly, or get other liaisons, because hospitals are an everlasting flow of referrals if you know how to get them. And being that it is a hospital, there are some very definite and specific strategies for how to get referrals and gain loyalty from your referral sources in the hospital.

By the sheer nature of the beast, hospitals have patients, patients, and more patients - and many hospitals have direct mandates to get them out out out - AND FAST. Our services are the solution to their problems, in many more ways than one. All across the country, case managers and discharge planners are getting pressure from on high to make sure certain patients and certain types of patients don’t get re-hospitalized. It’s affecting their bottom line - and who can be their knight in shining armor? US. Whether it’s keeping CHF patients from being re-hospitalized or making a cancer patient comfortable at home, it’s up to us, and it’s up to our liaisons.

But if your liaisons aren’t GOING AFTER the referrals, if they aren’t trained in how to do that - and effectively - then you’re throwing referrals away. Our liaison training has shown again and again to skyrocket referrals in the agencies that receive it - do you want to be one of those agencies? Or do you want to keep burning money?

How Do Home Care and Hospice Agencies Improve Their Management and Operations? They keep raising the bar!

by

Historically, our industry has trailed the rest of the business world in the areas of sales and marketing. And, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That being said, we are closing the gap and the sophistication of home health and hospice sales and marketing is on the rise. This means that to compete effectively you must get better in these areas.

It has been exciting for me to be on the leading edge of these trends and personally observe them with many of my clients and conversations with other industry leaders. There has been a continual expansion of the types of organizations placing new emphasis on sales and marketing. Initially it was primarily the for-profit and freestanding agencies that lead the way. Not-for-profit agencies soon followed as they felt the competitive pressures. In the last eighteen months I have seen a huge increase in inquiries from hospices.

As a result of these improvements, the expectations for each sales person and their productivity has increased. Higher expectations has encouraged a number of organizations to beef up their sales management, sales training and support.

Leading Areas of Improvement include:
Sales Training
Sales Management
CRM (customer relationship management)
Intake Sales Training
Sales Incentive Plans
Tracking Systems
Collateral Materials

Many organizations reacted to increased competition by throwing more people at the situation. If they did not have ‘sales people’ in the past, they hired them. Then they discovered that just putting people out there on the street was no longer enough. Sales training programs are becoming more prevalent. Sales managers are more likely to spend more of their time in the field with the sales people coaching and mentoring them.

CRM software and solutions are more common and many software vendors are looking at adding functionality in this area. The most progressive agencies have started the process of implementation. Most are including their intake people on the list of users for CRM. This enables them to know what the sales people know and vice versa. Sales training and or customer service training for the intake staff has become another key area of interest. It only makes sense to have those that talk to the referral sources most often trained to maximize those interactions.

Years ago, bonus programs for home care and hospice sales people were few and far between. In today’s market they are more common. Given the fact that you can really ‘push’ people to buy our services, it is a delicate area that requires a fine balance and must fit in the culture of the organization.

Tracking of where the referrals are coming from to evaluate return on investment from advertising programs is something that many agencies are implementing as a part of their CRM systems. Many are finding that more traditional advertising, such as Yellow Pages, is not returning as much as direct sales efforts. Many are shifting budget dollars into enhanced collateral materials such as brochures and sales sheets.

The bottom line is that the trend is clear, home care and hospice sales and marketing programs are becoming important areas of focus for senior management. They are finding that they must enhance their approach just to stay competitive.

Good Luck and Happy Selling!

How Green Are You? Part 2

by

How to get started?

What about efficient cars for your traveling staff? I have seen clients get great financial returns on their investment with agency owned vehicles (and the advertising benefit of having all of the ‘rolling billboards’). If those cars were hybrids, or bio fuel burning or other higher mileage vehicles, your costs per mile goes down and the ‘green’ agency message can be enhanced.

Recycling efforts are great for team building, and can be the source of new contests between offices or divisions. Home care and Hospices generate a lot of waste paper that could be recycled. Provide a source of filtered water so that employees are not using bottled water while at work. Make sure that plastics, soda cans, printer cartridges, old computers or monitors, etc. are all recycled. Another initiative might be on helping patients, families and referral partners increase recycling.

Maybe you could use the drive to be ‘green’ to recruit new or additional volunteers for hospice, raise money for a cause, or recruit employees. Much like other initiatives I have written about, they are most effective when they become cultural. This requires leadership from the top, and a long-term commitment to the cause. It should be consistent with your organization’s philosophies, mission, and approach to providing care to be truly successful.

Print your marketing materials on recycled paper and list the recycled content on the item with the recycle symbol (on the same note, use only recycled paper for your clinical forms, etc. as well). Use giveaway items that encourage, support or are consistent with being ‘green’.

Think about the effect of marketing outcomes and home care compare scores. In every market it has raised the issue and forced all agencies to take action. The end result is that the quality of care provided is increased across all providers. This initiative will be the same: expect that if you are a leader in promoting your agency’s ‘greenness’, you will have others who will jump on board. The result - we all do our part to contribute to the education and action necessary to stop many of the environmental abuses. Note: If you only have budget dollars for one initiative, spend it on improving quality before being ‘green’.

I think that social responsibility is always consistent with home care and hospice. If companies like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Starbucks, Chevrolet and others can use their ‘greenness’ to their marketing benefit, why not home care and hospice? Take action today, and remember to track the statistics so that you can report them to your staff, referral partners, and the community. Set the standard in your community!

Good Luck and Happy Selling!

How Green Are You? Part 1

by

I was delivering a speech to an audience at a regional conference back on Earth Day and thought it would be ask them the question, “How ‘green’ is your agency?” In other words, what are they doing to be ecologically sensitive? There were a few people who responded, but clearly it has not been a focus for many organizations. My hat is off to those agencies that have already focused their attention on being ecological - as an industry we can and should do more.

Since my passion is sales and marketing for home care and hospice, you might expect that I would tie the two subjects together! As you may have noticed, companies in all different industries have been differentiating themselves as ‘green’ - it’s the hot new marketing tool! While car and energy companies have used it to great effect, so far Home Care and Hospice have yet to tap into this great new marketing trend. Being a ‘green’ agency can resonate really well in the community because ‘green’ sells!

The question is not why spend the time and energy to make your agency ‘greener’, but why not? You do something good for the environment AND get credit for your actions in the community. It’s a win-win situation.

We constantly search for points of differentiation that resonate with our audience in order to make the case for selecting our agency over a competitor. We are always looking for ways to have the referral partners think of us not as a commodity, but as the preferred choice for referrals to home care and hospice. Given the growing success of direct to consumer advertising, especially in private pay and hospice, setting yourself apart as a result of being considerate of the environment will add to your message.

Lest anyone get too excited, however, while I am proposing the use of being ‘green’ as another point of differentiation, it won’t ultimately carry the day on its own merit. I don’t think you can expect the community to make its decision solely on your environmental consciousness. The following are a few of the things you can realistically expect from your investment in being ‘green’:

Public relations - your initiatives in this area are a great way to generate additional human interest stories that are very desirable for the media in your community.

Employee satisfaction - it is not simply a coincidence that most of the companies on the best places to work awards list are also recognized as being environmentally aware.

Team building - make this project a team effort. You will get involvement from many in your organization who are passionate about the environment.

Cost savings - many ecological initiatives result in cost savings in the long run. You can calculate the long-term return on investment of your investments in these areas.

Point of differentiation - there aren’t many agencies promoting the fact that they are the most environmentally conscious, so you have the ability to be unique for a period of time.

The next column will go over the cost savings of going green, and other aspects that help your agency’s bottom line.

Qualifying

by

One the most important attributes of the successful home care or hospice sales person is the ability to qualify prospects and customers. There should be for each agency a list of questions that you will want to know about every referral source. This list should be compiled by the entire team at the agency, as the attributes of the ideal referral source will hinge on these items. The reason your most successful “A” accounts are your best accounts is because your agency best serves their needs. Your job to grow your number of “A” accounts is finding out the needs of your other referral sources, finding ways to serve those needs, and presenting your agency as the logical solution to those needs or challenges.

You must uncover the referral sources needs and special interests by properly qualifying them. The number one qualifying questions you should ask every new account or prospect is: “Who calls in the referrals to home care (or hospice)?”. This does 2 important things: first, it skips all the closed ended questions like “Do you refer to home care/hospice?”. If they dont want to talk to you, the easy answer for them is “no” (even if they do). So making it an open ended and focused question like “who calls in the referrals for home care/hospice” cuts down on that possibility. The second benefit of that question is that many times the person who calls in the referrals is MORE important than the physician, as they control the flow of referrals and who they go to. You could have the physician bought into your agency 100%, but if the person who calls in the referrals doesn’t know about it, or thinks another agency does a better job, you aren’t getting the referral. A third, and bonus reason, is that many times you are much more likely to get in front of that person than in front of the doc. So, it’s the key question you need to be asking your accounts.

Some sample qualifying questions you could add to your list:

What percentage of patients do you care for are on Medicare?
How do you match specific patients with a specific home care/hospice agency? (this is especially effective when you are trying to get your foot in the door at physician’s office with a preferred agency)
How would you like us to get the orders to you for signature?
What would be the easiest way for you to refer to us, phone, fax, or email?
What will it take for us to do in order to get a referral? (use this only after visiting for 2 months without getting a referral)

This list is by no means complete, but it should give you some direction with your qualifying. If you know what the customer wants, then you are half of the way home.

Celebrating Milestones

by

Organizations can use important milestones to anchor marketing messages in their communities. The fact that the agency has served the community for ten, twenty, or twenty-five years, adds credibility and provides a point of differentiation.

How to Promote Milestones

Be proud of our industry and all it has accomplished. Celebrate your milestones, and use them in your marketing, news releases, and stories. Good Luck and Happy Selling!

Home Care and Hospice Marketing Best Practices Part 2

by

Last time we talked about how marketing home care and hospice services is a field that is starting to grow out of it’s infancy and catch up with other industries that have been practicing and refining marketing for decades. We talked about how agencies across the nation are seeing more competition and better marketing programs, and the bar is constantly being raised as agencies improve the quality (and quantity) of their marketing efforts and to compete it is increasingly important that the agency strive for marketing excellence. This time we’ll talk about CRM and other aspects of marketing that will help to grow your agency.

To manage the relationships with the agency’s referral sources, best practice agencies are turning to customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions. These programs allow the agency to automate many of the sales processes and to keep a constant presence in front of the customer. By using a CRM solution the agency makes sure that nothing “slips through the cracks.” The leading CRM solution for home care and hospices is homecareCRM (http://www.homecareCRM.com).

Professionally produced and designed to marketing collateral materials is another area that has become more and more important to set an agency apart from the competition. These materials many times will provide the basis for a first impression about the agency. And as such, have tremendous value - after all you only get one chance to create a first impression. This does not mean they must be expensive, but they must reflect the nature and image of the agency. They must also be competitive with other agencies material in the marketplace. Print and produce the nicest quality you can afford - it is always better to print less quantity of better quality than the opposite. While on the subject of quantities, another thing to remember is print only the amount you will use in the next six to twelve months. I have been in too many agencies that have store room shelves filled with brochures that are three years old and out of date - but they still have a million of them!

The agencies with the most productive sales forces are those that have incentive and bonus programs in place for their sales team. These incentives should be tied directly to results generated by individual salesperson. They should be provided in addition to the salesperson’s base salary. The agency must be competitive within the local marketplace for total compensation for Homecare or Hospice marketers, as well as other sales positions in other industries. Always make sure that the bonus program is easy to understand, attainable and consistent. Remember to think big - make sure that if someone “hits the ball out of the park” that you will smile as you write that big bonus check!

Another highly successful practice is packaging specialties services around agency’s core competencies. By doing this, the agency is able to establish itself as the specialist in a field and create the reason to utilize the agency. Some examples would include orthopedics, cardiology, hospice or Alzheimer’s specialty programs. Many times an important ally in the marketing process becomes the local association that supports individuals suffering from that particular disease process. Get involved and keep them involved in what you are doing. To increase success, include the specialists in the community that specialize in the area in designing, developing and implementing the program. The program may even be developed specifically for a single practice to provide for the greatest level of buy-in from the physician and their practice. There are Medicare agencies that have created orthopedic specialty programs for specific practices that allow the agency to garner a large share of these highly sought-after referrals.

A note on niche marketing: Make sure there is demand for home care or hospice services for the niche you are considering, that the niche is not over saturated, and that there is a payer to allow you to make a good return.

I hope these ideas have given you some new ideas, validated existing programs you have in place and above all else, motivated you to take action to improve your marketing program today! Good luck and happy marketing!

Home Care and Hospice Marketing Best Practices Part 1

by

Marketing home care and hospice services is a field that is starting to grow out of it’s infancy and catch up with other industries that have been practicing and refining marketing for decades. Agencies across the nation are seeing more competition and better marketing programs, and the bar is constantly being raised as agencies improve the quality (and quantity) of their marketing efforts. To compete, it is increasingly important that the agency strive for marketing excellence. This column is dedicated to discussing some of the best practices being utilized to great success.

The first thing to recognize is the importance of analysis and planning. Those agencies that are really separating themselves from the competition are developing competitive marketing plans. These plans include budgets, goals and measurement tools. Additionally they are constantly engaging in market analysis to refine budgets and determine opportunities. They are conducting market surveys, convening focus groups, performing competitive analysis and, in general, keeping their finger on the pulse of the market.

Once an agency creates a marketing plan, it becomes a living, breathing document that must be reviewed on a regular basis, revised as necessary and used to monitor the progress that the agency has made towards its goals. The plan should be shared with the entire staff so that everyone is part of making the plan come true. Visible measurement tools should be used to enable everyone to see progress towards the goal. These tools should keep the entire organization abreast of where the organization stands in respect to its goals at all times.

Hiring marketers with sales abilities as the first consideration is another mark of best practices in home care and hospice marketing today. It is always easier to train a salesperson about home care or hospice than to train a home care/hospice person about sales. It is said that sales is in one’s blood, and this is true in all industries including ours. The training program that is developed for the agency’s sales force is also of great importance. Progressive agencies today are spending the time and making the investment in training for their sales team. A well trained team becomes another strategic and competitive advantage for the agency. Whether its our highly acclaimed Simione Square One Boot Camp, or other sales training, make sure it is as industry specific as our is - this will be the key to success.

It doesn’t matter how refined a marketing program becomes. It will always be the constant and consistent presence in front of the prospective referral source that enables them to become a major source of referrals. Studies have shown that patients are referred to agencies that have pleasant, likable salespeople who have developed relationships and who are calling on them frequently. The frequency will depend on the importance of the referral source. Top accounts should be called on, on average, once per week. Depending upon the total number of accounts, the balance of the referral sources can be scheduled based on resources. Leading agencies are discovering that they cannot afford to decrease the frequency for their key accounts without the risk of losing business. As we all know, our number 1 account is our competitor’s number 1 target - so it is important to cultivate and enhance your relationships with your best accounts.

Our Simione Square One Boot Camp teaches both how to call on accounts on a weekly basis and have great, relationship building conversations full of value to our referral sources, as well as how to enhance and strengthen those relationships - make sure your Reps are trained in those two vital skills.

Next time we’ll talk about CRM and other aspects of marketing that will help to grow your agency.

The One Thing Your Reps Can Do - Right Now - That Will Grow Referrals Part 2

by

Last time we talked about how there was one thing that if you put it into play today you will see tremendous results, and that magic bullet was closing - or asking for the referral. We talked about how this was one of the areas that we constantly see home care and hospice sales people struggling with and that whenever we speak to a state or national association type crowd and closing comes up, we usually get some discomfort in the audience. We also discussed how if your sales people cannot ask for the order or the referral, they will not be as effective as they would be if they could, and that this was the one area that you will want to use in your diagnostic tools if you have salespeople that are just not delivering results. If they are not closing, you should immediately train them to do so or move them to a position for which they are suited. After all, a salesperson that cannot close is not a salesperson!

So while I wrote about how there is training for this specific skill widely available, both from our company and others (and this summer from our online Simione University course), let’s get deeper into this concept and discuss some different types of closing, and various examples of great closing questions.

There are many different types of closes and styles of closers. What will work for one Rep may not for another - it’s all about the right way to close for each sales person, at each account, with each different person, and how your Sales Reps use the concept in their own words and style. Your sales staff should know when to use a subtle close and when the direct approach is required, as this could be the difference between a mountain of referrals and getting few or none. We teach all of this at our Square One Boot Camp, but here is some tips to get you started:

Here are a few of my favorite closing questions:

My absolute favorite: “Since you felt we did such a great job with Mrs. Brown, which three patients can you think of that would benefit from the same high level of service?”.

“Which three patients can you think of that you wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t here for Thanksgiving (or whatever Holiday is 6 months away)”.

“Which three patients are on a first name basis with your answering service?”

As you can tell with all of these, they paint a specific picture of a patient for the referral source to think about, and instead of saying “DO you have any patients” it uses the language “WHICH patients...”. The point being that the former doesn’t make the person think (it’s a “yes/no” closed question, which as we all know, their first instinct is to say “no"), and the latter does.

Now that you’ve seen some specific examples of questions, let’s talk about different TYPES of closes:

Assumptive close - this is a very natural way to close a home care or hospice sale. You simply assume that they will be sending you referrals. It becomes not ‘if’ but ‘when’ they will be sending them. Example: “When you send us your next patient, you’ll be able to simply fax us this easy referral form”.

Slice close - used with great effectiveness in home care or hospice as you are asking the prospect to give you a “slice” of their business. You are asking them to try your agency and give you a piece of their referrals. Example: If a hospital has their own agency, but you know you service a certain area that they do not. So, something like “I completely understand you having a preferred agency. Other hospitals have told me the same thing when I first came to see them, but what they found was that for certain patients, those that live outside their service area, we were the best choice to serve those patients”.

Puppy dog close - can be used effectively in home care, especially selling private duty services. Could take the form of a free day of service or other free trial offer. This one is pretty specific (private duty) and is rarely used outside of that specific situation.

Each home care or hospice professional sales person will have their own closing techniques that work best for them. The wording may be different from person to person, but the basics remain the same - you must ask for the order and close the business. Anyone who believes that this is not true in home care or hospice is only fooling themselves.

If you don’t ask, you may waste an inordinate amount of time on referral sources that are not only not giving you business now, but never intend to (for instance, if their brother is the medical director for a rival agency). You will also find that you are not getting ALL of the possible referrals from your “good” referral sources as well if you do not ask always for the business. Closing can double your number of referrals versus not closing - so give it a try and see how much it will increase your referrals.

The One Thing Your Reps Can Do - Right Now - That Will Grow Referrals Part 1

by

Feature Article

Solutions

Contact

ABOUT

Services

Resources

News & Events

HCHMS